The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Wednesday, 12.23.15. “Twas the night before the night before”
Howdy folks,
Wow… Christmas is in two days? Holy cow.
This tends to be a really, really tough training week for folks. Lots of external pressures and obligations can make it pretty darn tough to get out and get on the bike.
Here’s a tip: don’t stress out about this. Ride if and when you can. Try to get some kind of riding in. This close to Nationals, doing a bunch of short fast efforts are a good idea anyways, so if you’re short on time? Do some sprint efforts, or work on your starts.
The workout today is an in-depth start and skills session, but if you’re short on time just do the start. Heck, you can roll out your front door and get some quality work in just blasting out a set of start efforts on the residential street in front of your house! Just don’t get creamed by a car, ok?
Enjoy…
Starting up…
1 – warm up for 10 minutes.
2 – Stretch out after you’re warm.
Pay special attention to all the muscles used in those movements you make hopping on and off the bike that are different from what you usually do.
3 – Dismount/remount skills for 5-10-15 minutes (depends how rusty you are. Do more of these, less of everything else if you need to.)
– Start at literally a walking pace, and slowly increase speed until you can mount and dismount the bike smoothly and perfectly at full speed. Do not jump on and off the bike, you are looking to smoothly slide yourself on and off.
Need a refresher on the basics? Click here.
Do just the most basic dismount/remount as per above until you have it wired, smooth at all speeds. When you are feeling confident, add some barriers to the session…
– Again, start at a super, super slow speed.
– Approach the barrier, dismount smooth as silk.
– Step over the barrier, paying attention to how you lift the bike, and how you place your feet.
– Remount. Again, think smoooooth….
– Start with a single barrier, move to a double, and keep going slow until you have things wired. Then, speed things up until you aren’t smooth, back it down 1 notch, and make it smooth.
(If you don’t have barriers, anything will do. Use a log, put a stick on the ground – whatever.)
4 – Starts.
Just like the beginning of a race. One foot on the ground, dead standstill, get-up-and-go.
Begin with a few medium effort starts, working on all the things we talked about above.
Remember…
– Start with your pedals at 3&9 o’clock, not 12 and six.
– Alternate butt-on-saddle and off
– Alternate hands in drops with hands on hoods.
When you start to get the feel for things, hit it hard a couple of times, then back off.
2 sets of all the variations above at a medium to slow pace.
Feeling solid, skills-wise?
Nice.
Get yourself ready to go hard.
– Bang! Six full-gas starts.
– short effort, just go long enough that you are up to full speed, then back down, turn around, go again.
Spin easy for a couple of minutes, then…
– Bang! ~pause~ Bang!
– Six full-gas starts, but each start effort will look like this…
– Full effort start from a dead-stop, foot on ground.
– As soon as you get up to full speed, sit back in saddle, take one deep breath, go again, HARD!
– Ouch.
5 – Recover for a few minutes, then Finish the night with two interval efforts on relatively easy terrain.
– “Easy” as in a loop on grass with some tight-ish turns on it, or some pretty buffed double-track.
– Go hard, and work on accelerations out of the turns.
– Every time you slow down entering a turn, get on the gas on the way out of it, ass out of the saddle, working hard.
– 6 minutes full gas, rest for 2 minutes, then go again for 5.
– Start each effort with, well… with a start. Like you were working on a couple of minutes ago…
Warm down, go home, relax.
Enjoy!
M
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